The good news for millions of out-of-work Americans: Job prospects are improving, with the unemployment rate showing a surprise drop to a three-year low of 8.3 percent.

The bad news: Many job-seekers may have to settle for lower-paying jobs and even then may have to wait another two or three years to find work.

“The economy and jobs market are on better footing, but it’s too early to crack open the champagne,” says Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist at Mizuho Securities USA.

The addition of 243,000 jobs to the economy in January — 93,000 more than economists were expecting — is a welcome relief, but there were some seasonal adjustments, which skewed the numbers, to account for laid-off holiday workers. The report also showed a record number — 699,000 — claiming to be employed part-time.

“We still haven’t seen all of the unemployed workers who are too discouraged to look start to come back,” says Ricchiuto. “That’s going to be the real tipping point.”

The unemployment rate jumps to more than 15 percent when those too discouraged to look and others who are part-timers wanting full-time work are factored into the equation.

All these factors suggest the country still has a tough slog ahead to get to “full employment” — a level of around 5 percent — in which most of those willing and able to work have jobs.

Two other worrisome statistics are the high unemployment among 16- to 19-year-olds, which can’t seem to budge from 23 percent, and the 5.5 million Americans who have been out of a job for 27 weeks or longer, a figure that also has been stuck.

Economists say full employment probably won’t be restored for at least another two or three years.

Steve Blitz, chief economist with ITG Investment Research, says part of the reason for the sluggishness is that the recovery is being led by the return of manufacturing to the US.

“Manufacturing doesn’t grow with the same kind of leverage that finance and real estate grow,” says Blitz. “It’s a protein economy versus a sugar economy.”

While a manufacturing job used to be a ticket to a middle-class life, that doesn’t appear to be the case this time around, as many job-seekers accept factory positions with companies such as General Electric and General Motors for much less than they would have been paid only a few years ago.

“You don’t need as many people working in a factory to produce a widget as you did years ago, because of automation,” says Blitz. “But you still have to get the widget to the factory where it’s sold. Along the line, you need wholesalers, truckers and bookkeepers.”